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Poems by Peter Meinke

The First Marriage
By Peter Meinke

imagine the very first marriage a girl and boy trembling with some inchoate need for ceremony a desire for witness: inventing formality like a wheel or a hoe in a lost language in a clearing too far from here a prophet or prophetess intoned to the lovers who knelt with their hearts cresting like the unnamed ocean thinking 'This is true' thinking they will never be alone again though planets slip their tracks and fish desert the sea repeating those magic sounds meaning I do on this stone below this tree before these friends yes in body and word my darkdream my sunsong yes I do I do (from SCARS, U. of Pittsburgh Press 1996) © 1996 copyright Peter Meinke

 

The Secret Code
By Peter Meinke

Bach was rising from another room like a secret code in a mathematician's castle when you came toward me in a summer dress light slatted through the oaken banister like a secret code in a mathematician's castle floating down the stairway in the afternoon light slatted through the oaken banister an idea of harmony made manifest floating down the stairway in the afternoon striping your slender body like a strobe an idea of harmony made manifest The music wound you in a golden braid striping your slender body like a strobe and Bach and April and undying youth like music wound you in a golden braid conspiring until I knew the dream of Bach and April and undying youth would cling across the downward years conspiring until I knew that dream despite the disharmonic tarnishing of time would cling across the downward years and fuse our lives together like a fugue to spite the disharmonic tarnishing of time Then all turned mysterious and blessed and fused our lives together like a fugue when you came toward me in a summer dress turning all mysterious and blessed while Bach was rising from another room (from SCARS, U. of Pittsburgh Press 1996) © 1996 copyright Peter Meinke

 

Liquid Paper
By Peter Meinke

Smooth as a snail, this little parson pardons our sins. Touch the brush tip lightly and--'abracadabra!'--a clean slate. We know those who blot their brains by sniffing it, which shows it erases more than ink and with imagination anything can be misapplied . . . In the army, our topsergeant drank aftershave, squeezing my Old Spice to the last slow drop. It worked like Liquid Paper in his head until he'd glide across the streets of Heidelberg hunting for the house in Boise, Idaho, where he was born . . . If I were God I'd authorize Celestial Liquid Paper every seven years to whiten our mistakes: we should be sorry and live with what we've done but seven years is long enough and all of us deserve a visit now and then to the house where we were born before everything got written so far wrong. (from LIQUID PAPER: NEW & SELECTED POEMS, U. of Pittsburgh Press, 1991) © 1991 copyright Peter Meinke

Back to Peter Meinke: The Man and the Works
by Patricia Lieb

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